Usually when we go for long drives it’s my dad that takes the wheel. He’s totally at ease driving while I used to be a nervous wreck!

I stopped driving for 7 years while I was living abroad, but when I came back home, one of the first things I had to do was get a car. I got back into the swing of it quite quickly, but I was still happy to stick with short journeys.

Today I decided to be brave and ended up doing a 180 miles coastal tour with my dad and I loved every second of it!

We even managed to fit in some time for some photo breaks!

I guess the moral of this is, go do that thing that you’ve always wanted to try but have been too afraid to. Go on that long trip, dye your hair that shade of pink you’ve always wanted to, try skydiving…

You might fail, but hey, you can learn just as much from failure as you can from success. It’s all about attitude.

For anyone who doesn’t know what an E-bike is, it’s basically a bicycle with a battery. This was the E-bike I owned a couple of years ago before I moved to a different city. The battery weighs 19KG! Thank goodness my apartment back then had an elevator!

So that’s an e-bike and they are EVERYWHERE in China. They are great for getting from A to B, they are quite fast, this is a normal sized one and I could get up to 30mph on it. There are bigger ones can go even faster. The problem with this is that they don’t make any noise. They are as silent as a bicycle but way faster, making them quite dangerous. The other main problem with them is that even though there are nearly always bike lanes specifically for, you guessed it, bikes, some people just see the road, or pavement as fair game. So you could be innocently walking on the pavement, where you’re meant to be, then BAM! Your arm gets hit by someone trying to squeeze by you on the pavement, they then throw you a dirty look like its your fault!

If you want an e-bike in China no matter if you are a daft young kid or a half blind old man with a wooden leg, as long as you have the money, you can get one. There’s no test or license to get one. I literally walked into a shop, they let me test-ride it, I paid then rode it out of the shop! This unfortunately means there are some really bad drivers out there.

I actually witnessed an accident today, I was walking home from work and there was a little girl, maybe about 8 years old sitting sideways on the back of her mother’s bike and her mother swerved quickly and the little girl toppled off backwards. Luckily, she was one of the few kids who was wearing a helmet. Most people who ride an e-bike don’t wear safety gear.

I was lucky enough to only fall off my bike once, I had just started to ride it, made it a metre and I fell, I blame the snow haha~